


To the End of Love

by elena0206



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, From murder boyfriends to murder husbands, Implied piano kink, Kinda, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-03-08
Packaged: 2018-10-01 05:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10181576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elena0206/pseuds/elena0206
Summary: But then Hannibal did the one thing Will had not excepted, had not imagined, had not dared to even think about before, lest he should will a faraway longing into existence, and it felt like the only thing that could have ever happened. The single course of action that had any right to take place in this word, in spite of everything they held to be true about themselves, about the life they had built together.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SveaShan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SveaShan/gifts).



> Translation in Russian can be found [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/5511671). Thank you so much!!

* * *

Strokes of white and then strokes of black in between – sometimes rushed, missing a note or two, sometimes adding a break where there should have been none. And yet the music kept on playing, oblivious to its own imperfections, and it flooded him from the inside, the melody echoing against walls forming the deepest chambers of his mind palace. It hummed in his chest like a second heartbeat. It made his blood feel lighter, and his breath bold and hasty. With exhilarating awareness of the present moment, he traced the notes on an imagined staff of his own. Each note was a golden bird landing on linear branches, and then dissolving in sunlight, and each felt like a feverish pulse under his skin, bursting through the seams of his very being.

And all of this became of _him_ . Because Will Graham was there, within arm’s reach, with his fingers sprawled over the piano’s keyboard. There was something so captivating in the way the pushed each key – not elegance, but adamant gentleness, a deliberate control of physical power ending in his fingertips as delicate strokes. Considering the full potential of Will’s muscles, of his power, how it ranged from savage to gentle, from tender to brutal, how he alone had witnessed him unraveling – _beautiful and wild and visceral_ – Hannibal released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

He stood behind the younger man, watching the way Will’s hands swayed across the keyboard, and how he ducked his head ever so slightly from time to time, as to push the pitch lower or stress a note of particular significance. His fingers – long and hardened – betrayed a certain familiarity with the instrument. Distant as it may be, but familiarity all the same, and Hannibal couldn’t help but wonder what else Will knew how to play, and what else he was willing to learn. It was not the first time Will had played the piano in Hannibal’s presence, but had it been the hundredth time to hear the melodies sprung from the dance of his fingers, it wouldn’t have moved him any less. Each occasion was a process of discovery, an exploration of facades being torn apart one by one, only to be replaced by something new, something even more dazzling than before.

By the time Will finished playing, Hannibal had already sealed the melody in his memory, cradling it like a precious jewel, breathtakingly sharp and real. Demanding in its intensity like an acute pain settling in.

He could almost feel the smile spreading on Will’s face as he placed a hand on his shoulder, tracing his thumb along the back of his neck.

“ _Romance Anónimo_ ,” Will explained, not yet turning around. “Or rather an arrangement,” he added with a broken chuckle.

“Beautiful.”

Hannibal’s whisper mingled with Will’s breath, as the former bent over and plied his beloved’s lips with his own, taking his chin between the thumb and forefinger.

“De nuevo!” a high-pitched, juvenile voice called from outside, rattling the languid silence of the room and interrupting them.

“Our young spectators here seem to be asking for an _encore_ ,” Hannibal said in the space between the two of them, amusement thickening his voice.

Will smiled, and got up, brushing a hand against Hannibal’s knee as he did so. “Have you been selling them tickets?” he joked, coking an eyebrow at Hannibal. He went out on the balcony, and leaned over the railing, trying to convince the children gathered on the street that it was getting late and they’d heard enough piano music for one night.

As he watched Will negotiate with the stubborn crowd below, something inside of Hannibal shifted. A tingle in the thick warmth of the evening air and the suddenness of a stray thought. A subtle change in the pace of his breathing, made more obvious by the unexpected tightness in his throat.

An ardent sense of urgency captured his mind as he rushed to the wine cabinet, and pulled out a small box hidden behind one of those bottles Hannibal was certain Will had no interest in consuming on his own. He smiled to himself. The promise of mediocrity that came with such yearnings was but a sweet, idle ache burning in his heart. Undeniable as much as it was unobtrusive and easy to quell. Until this moment.

It was not the right time or the right place for this, _and yet._

And yet what good was waiting for the perfect opportunity when no tomorrow came without the threat of being a last? Did they not deserve this small indulgence added to their wicked make-believe? Were they not allowed to bask in the blissful commodity of a borrowed life?

They were. They did.

And just like that, Hannibal found that there was no decision to be taken and no further alternatives to ruminate on.

“One day they’re gonna figure out I don’t actually know who their parents are,” Will said, and his voice trailed off as he came back inside. He took his glass of whiskey from where it lay unattended, and drank it in one fell swoop. The bitter warmth spreading down his throat was a pleasant accompaniment to the already leisurely ambience, and he sank down on the cabriole sofa. One of his arms was hanging down, swinging back and forth in a nonchalant and sluggish manner as he watched Hannibal.

“Well?” he said after a while, when the silence had lapsed into an unnatural state of stillness. “The Chardonnay giving you trouble again?”

But Hannibal didn’t respond to Will’s quip with a biting remark or a slight and knowing smile as he normally would have. He didn’t even turn around to face Will and acknowledge his presence.

Something was off.

Conditioned by years on the run, taut caution cloaking each step, Will’s body tensed, and his eyes darted from Hannibal to the front door, to the balcony, to the windows, to the nearest object that could have become a weapon.

There was no intruder, _no_. That was impossible. There had been no suspicious activity around their home, nobody following them. Nobody was officially searching for them anymore, and their names had dropped several places on the list of FBI’s most wanted during the years since they had vanished without a trace.

Still, Hannibal’s lack of response was profoundly unnerving. Ice-cold shivers tingled along Will’s nerves, leaving his fingertips numb and aching. He swallowed, and rose from his seat.

“Hannibal?” he called out, eyes pinned on the other’s back.

At last Hannibal turned around from the cabinet, took an abrupt and quick step, and then stopped again. He was holding a black velvet box with both hands, thumbs running up and down its surface. He looked…

_Nervous._

Will narrowed his eyes. The cold feeling gnawing at him turned into something else. He approached Hannibal with precaution, and each step was a deliberate stretch of his muscles, careful and measured. He didn’t stop until the distance between them had shrunk to mere inches.

“Will.”

Hannibal’s breath rasped in his throat as the name fluttered off his lips. He smiled, and Will smiled too, the anxious heaviness lifting off his shoulders. Not completely, but enough to allow him to relax.

But then Hannibal did the one thing Will had not excepted, had not imagined, had not dared to even think about before, lest he should will a faraway longing into existence, and it felt like the only thing that could have ever happened. The single course of action that had any right to take place in this word, in spite of everything they held to be true about themselves, about the life they had built together.

Hannibal knelt down before Will, opening the little box, and presenting it to him, with a soft smile, glistening eyes, and the same half-concealed exhilaration that had greeted Will years and years ago in Florence. There lay a silver ring with dainty filigree carved all around, in the shape of what could have been an elegant tangle of branches or roots or rivers or antlers or any of the many complicated patterns found in nature. Perfect fractals resonating with the complexity of their push-and-pull, both in calculated symmetry and rampant chaos.

Will had to laugh. Of course.

_Of course._

Hannibal’s own smile did not falter. It only grew larger as Will covered his mouth with his hand, rubbing his fingers through his stubble and along his jawline in bewilderment or disbelief or something else entirely.

“The promise of your love has been nipping at my heart, singing songs of forever,” Hannibal began speaking, and just for one second his eyes drifted away from Will’s face to the floor. “Lately I’ve found myself listening to them. I’ve found myself unable to consider eternity without thinking about _you_ , Will.”

A beat had passed until Will could gather his words, and the silence that had felt unnatural minutes earlier was now but a mere extension of his thoughts. He shook his head left and right, and then up and down, until the gesture dissolved into a quiet smile.

“Are you asking me”—he began, still uncertain how to phrase something so staggering and grand by making use of such ordinary language, even as the words flew away from him one by one—“to marry you?”

Hannibal let out a slight, dry chuckle, and his lips curled into a grin. He should have expected that Will would put a name on what he was asking of him. A simple, common name that made his heart stir in his chest and his lungs crumble at each breath.

_Marriage._

“Yes,” Hannibal answered, and his tongue flicked over the inner side of his bottom lip. “I believe I am.”

Will reached out, and cupped Hannibal’s face with both hands, making him stand and pulling him in for a kiss. It was a timid, little thing that only lasted a few seconds, almost fearful of the renewed affection and intimacy between the two of them.

“Shall I take that as a _yes_?” Hannibal whispered against Will’s ear, and the latter simply hummed a sound of approval, low and content.

Neither pulled back nor opened their eyes.

And so they stood in the middle of the room as the world around them started to fade away. At first the sounds – the distant roar of the city, the insects buzzing outside, the light breeze whirling through leaves. Then the smell of wood and incense and cologne, the warmth of the summer night, the steady feel of the hard floor beneath their feet. Until all that was left of reality as they had known it was the weight of each other’s body and the rapid beating of their hearts.

And so forever began.


End file.
